"Totally coup, yo."

“It’s only a system,” she said, as we floated through the sprawling supermarket’s gleaming commodity lined indoor streets. “THE HELL IT IS! It’s a goddamned air conditioned zombie hell of waste and gluttony,” I thought to myself, before the usual vertigo completely enveloped me. Just back from Central America’s simple, comprehensible mercados, bodegas and street cart vendors, the effect of this most common American shopping venue was, as always, one of vertigo. Head splitting light beats down on pyramids of plastic eggs, as if to incubate their hatching of the ladies stockings within, dozens of kinds of toothpaste, well scrubbed dead chickens, lurid baskets of too-perfect flowers, plastic wraps, tissue for faces, asses and wrapping gifts, row upon row of polished vegetables and fruits standing like soldiers waiting for the annihilation of salads or the ovens of casseroledom.

As the debate continues to rage on over whether or not the U.S. should include a public, government-funded plan in its healthcare reform, many citizens abruptly noticed that the federal government funds and regulates all Interstate Highways in the nation, and has done so for over 50 years.

Now, many are up in arms over the largest public works project in history, which has somehow gone unnoticed since the mid-20th century.

I came to extreme poverty late in life, and did very badly at it. I should have done some kind of crime. But what kind? That’s what I couldn’t figure out. What kind of crime can you actually do, if you aren’t a lawyer and don’t understand computers?

There were certainly plenty of people who could have offered me some advice on the matter. We were living on a boat, moored in a skuzzy little harbor full of small-time criminals. The one guy who went off to a job every day was a figure of awe and mockery, a freak. Everybody else scavenged or stole to buy their booze and weed.

But crime didn’t pay, at least for these guys. They were as poor as we were. Poorer, because they needed a lot of cash for their chemicals, and we stuck with free government Prozac.

Man. It’s been years that I’ve forced myself to observe, with muted horror, the degeneration of political discourse in America. Occasionally, I’ve even had the pleasure of taking part in it. But it seems I’m never quite cynical enough to predict the depths we’re willing to plumb as a nation.

I thought I was going to write a piece about how stupid it is that the right argues a public option is unfair because private insurance companies can’t compete against it. I mean, it really is an insane position, that we can’t have a public insurance option because it would provide better service for less money. And it’s equally insane to assert that private insurance companies need to make money more than Americans need access to health care.

Okay, the clown thing was fucking stupid. First of all, Ian Murphy deserved to get a serious beat-down, but it didn’t happen. Having his snide ass kicked by bible-thumpers would have at least been funny. If some weirdo waltzed into my local bar wearing a clown suit and making an ass out of himself while I was trying to enjoy a soothing, well-deserved beer, I can assure you that he’d find himself balls-up on the sidewalk trying to figure out why he had on that dumb-assed clown wig. Smarten up, Ian. Being a dick isn’t always hilarious.

Manuel Martinez

Dear Manuel,

So what you’re saying is, if you were at a bar, and a guy walked into the bar in a clown suit, you’d beat him up? That doesn’t seem very cool of you, Manuel. Why not say, “Hey, clown guy! Come have a drink and tell me your story”? It’s just a bar, Manuel, what’s the big deal? Sheesh. It’s not Murphy’s fault the churchies didn’t have the balls to beat him up.

Matt Korvette has got to be the absolute worst person to have in your band.

As I watched him jaunt around the Mohawk Place stage on May 15th, whipping rubber-chicken limbs in every direction with an injured, faux-diva sexuality, I got the vague feeling that this is what it would look like if Jim Carrey were cast for the role of Henry Rollins in a Black Flag biopic.

And not regular Jim Carrey. Early, maniacal, Ace Ventura-era Carrey, where his shenanigans were silly, but only because you didn’t actually have to deal with him in person. And you only laugh at it now because you thought it was the greatest thing ever when you were eleven.

Korvette is the front-man for Pissed Jeans, an Allentown, Pennsylvania-based hardcore band that redefines the word “suck.” They’ve cancelled their last two Buffalo shows, so the performance was highly anticipated. At least by the thirty kids in attendance, who were, to judge by appearance, all members in the opening bands.

Now, I don’t care for hardcore. I spent a year or two in and out of basements, got my fill and came upstairs. So I had specific disinterest in checking out the openers. I was outside with the chain-smokers through most of their sets. The few waves of sound that I caught through the opening and closing of doors didn’t strike me as particularly interesting.

Just when you think Will Ferrell has the ability to be comically irrefutable he goes and sticks his wick in some kid-friendly comic adventure. Don’t believe me? Go watch Anchorman, then watch Kicking and Screaming. If things aren’t bad enough in kiddy country, Will’s taking us to remake city as well. Remember the TV show Land of the Lost? Yeah, me neither but apparently it existed.

I’m not sure how this scenario is supposed to tie into the original series, but Ferrell plays some crackpot scientist who lands ass-backwards into some magical prehistoric otherworld with dinosaurs, lizard people and other dumb crap all the other scientists said doesn’t exist. Isn’t that ironic? Who’d have thought, right?

The worst part is you can’t even blame this movie on the economy. Land of the Lost probably got the okay last summer, and at worst they got a just okaylunch table as opposed to a four star spread after the words “economic crisis” garnered daily repetition.

Why the hell does this keep happening? I really don’t want to go on some tirade about how summer movies used to mean something (actually I’m not sure if they ever did). I also know that you really don’t have to try that hard to get people into an air-conditioned theater during post-shower shower season. But can’t you at least try?

If I was promised that Ferrell did something like dry hump an ice sculpture in the middle of this kid-friendly crapfest I would maybe watch it on cable someday. Maybe he could work some 9/11 jokes in there and defecate himself, just to let us know he isn’t serious with Land of the Lost.

Every few years a wingnut murders a doctor who performs abortions or bombs an abortion clinic. The most recent victim is Dr. George Tiller, a late-term abortion specialist who had already endured another attempted murder several years ago and whose clinic had been bombed in the past. The suspect taken into custody is named Scott Roeder.

To those of us who don’t hate women for having sex, Roeder is a clear villain, someone we wouldn’t mind seeing drowned in a slurry of discarded fetuses.

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